Form and Function

This week the kids all worked on turning good form into function. The preschool kids learned the deadlift and how to pick up heavy objects. For kids, we teach the sumo deadlift. It is much much easier to stand over the object (i.e. a backpack) to lift it than address it like a barbell.

They also did a workout with runs, dot drills and forward rolls. We like mixing up the metabolic challenge of the run, the coordination of the dot drills and the vestibular disorientation of the forward rolls. This gets them working on several systems at the same time.

The older kids worked on learning several skills this week. We started with lessons on sprinting and an introduction to the pose method. They learned how to lean forward and how to pump their arms for a sprint. They also learned how to do a thruster. This is a complex movement for kids to learn, but they did a great job. We break the movements down into more understandable sections, then put them all back together. Each of these movements is designed to help them with functional challenges. Sprinting is an obvious one, but learning the thruster teaches a lot of body awareness as well as body mechanics for when they have to move a load in real life. At the end of thursday’s class, the older kids got to play on the rope and rings. Walker got his first full rope climb and really started to figure out how to use his feet in a climb. Now that is functional fitness.